DISQUS

aquarius2 · 1 year ago

Good grief, this sounds like a fictional "disaster movie" except it is for real. What the hell could they be thinking? One very strong hurricane could expose all of America to diseases without cures. Odds are that may never happen but when dealing with the potential exposure, who wants to risk it?

SCLiberal · 1 year ago

This is the very definition of stupid.

How far away from Galveston is Crawford?

Mark in Florida · 1 year ago

Stupid is as stupid does....

ProgressiveTroll · 1 year ago

Glad this is finally getting some attention. I guess better late than never, but when dealing which such things as ebola and the like, it's probably too late. Question now is, what will President Obama do about this?

Gary SF · 1 year ago

Don't worry - Bush will appoint Michael Brown to take care of this.

JohnInTexas · 1 year ago

Oh thank God...I was getting worried.

JohnInTexas · 1 year ago

Congress is going to have a committee hold some hearings too, so everything's swell!

Older_Wiser · 1 year ago

Follow the money. Who got the graft...after all, universities are not exempt from this kind of shit.

This "laboratory" should be shut down since it threatens all of us.

Also, there was a news story yesterday that talked about West Nile virus being found in CA where abandoned and foreclosed houses have swimming pools and jacuzzis that have developed a solid film of algae promoting mosquito growth. That's about how much banks and mortgage companies care about people's health, too.

ProgressiveTroll · 1 year ago

I get email notices about earthquakes, there have been at least 60 small earthquakes in CA in the last 24 hours, the largest being 3.8. That many in such a small amount of time is scary. And just think McCain wants many nukular plants without a thought as to the waste and such things as earthquakes. If the Rethugs are allowed to steal this one, indeed the whole world is in a lot of trouble.

TireWorld · 1 year ago

Seriously? I have friends that work down there @ UTMB. And I live about 20 miles away from that place and this is the 1st I have heard of it..
FWIW, one the Nation's largest Oil Refineries(BP owned) is right across the bay from this....

PrahaPartizan · 1 year ago

Isn't BP the refiner who's had all sorts of safety issues with their refineries? Didn't they have one in which they experienced several explosions and fires which resulted in killing several workers?

aquarius2 · 1 year ago

Interesting article on hurricanes. One of the strongest was Gilbert hitting Brownsville Texas, too damn close to Galveston.

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/whcat5.htm

Milli · 1 year ago

Kind of like Giuliani putting NY's crisis control center in the World Trade Center after it was bombed in 1993? And he knew terrorists would try again?

DCinDC · 1 year ago

Dumb, Dumb, Dumb!

davidi92260 · 1 year ago

Any moron would place that lab under ground in the desert, or in the arctic tundra where these organisms would not be as active if released. Placing them in a tropical environment? Ridiculous!! More of the same idiocy.

Bluestocking · 1 year ago

It's stories like this which sometimes make me think that perhaps Bush -- either consciously or unconsciously -- is operating under the psychotic delusion that God wants to use him as a catalyst to bring about the End Times as described in the Bible. After all, quite a few "born-again" Christians these days reportedly believe that these events will take place within their own lifetimes -- and we've already got one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse -- War. Pestilence (or plague) is said to be one of the others. If a hurricane were to breach the "hot zone" of a lab storing the viruses and bacteria of such virulent diseases as Ebola and Marburg, it shouldn't be hard for anyone with two functioning brain cells to rub together to see that at least one (and quite possibly more than one) epidemic with national or even global impact could potentially result.

Either that, or Bush is in the grip of what I think Freud once called thanatos -- the desire for the death, destruction, and nullification of everything. If you can't make the world dance to your tune, destroy it? Personally, I for one don't see that idea as being all that contradictory with what we've seen of Bush's psyche thus far...

ProgressiveTroll · 1 year ago

My thoughts exactly. And these Rethugs and neocons are just plain evil.

ProgressiveTroll · 1 year ago

This wasn't idiocy. This was on purpose. Just like this economic "collapse". These people aren't the idiots people think they are. That's one reason why they get away with such treason and things. How many 9/11's and Katrina's and deliberate take downs of the American dollar before Americans get it????

bluestockton · 1 year ago

Hurricane Camille had 200-mph winds.

Older_Wiser · 1 year ago

Meanwhile, money, money, money...kaching. From AP:

HOUSTON - Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest publicly traded oil company, says it shattered its own record for the biggest profit from operations by a U.S. corporation, earning $14.83 billion in the third quarter. bolstered

Bolstered by this summer's record crude prices, the Irving, Texas-based company said Thursday that net income jumped nearly 58 percent, or $2.86 a share in the July-September. That compares with $9.41 billion, or $1.70 a share, a year ago.

The previous record for U.S. corporate profit was set earlier this year, when Exxon Mobil earned $11.68 billion in the second quarter.

Revenue rose 35 percent to $137.7 billion.

On average, analysts expected the company to earn $2.39 per share in the latest quarter on revenue of $131.4 billion.

Mark in Florida · 1 year ago

I am an Architect and I design structures on the ocean in Florida all day long. It is nearly impossible (short of a fortress like NOAA's hurricane center) to build any structure to withstand anything over 140 mph. Windows burst, roofs peel off. This is complete and utter pork at it's finest. This structure has no business being on that island. What an outrage. It does not matter that the labs are 30 feet above sea level. It's a losing choice. You either build higher, where winds get exponentially stronger, or you go lower below the storm surge.

WORST. PRESIDENT. EVER.

Mark in Florida · 1 year ago

One other point: This building may be able to withstand lateral forces, but it will fail in other ways. In other words, it's still not a place to have such deadly experiments going on. It's insanity.

Mark in Florida · 1 year ago

The article does say, that they will destroy what ever virus's they are working on in the event of an impending hurricane. Doesn't that make you feel better? Why would you build it on that island in the first place if three or four times a year you have to destroy all of your experiments? Something is very fishy here. With the likes of Kay Baily Hutchison and convicted Criminal Tom Delay who championed this pork, it is no wonder this is located where it is. These republicans talk about the evils of pork, but are whores when the pork lands on their door steps.

bob915 · 1 year ago

Mark, see my post previous. The Ebola virus does not just "get destroyed": that bldg in Reston I mentioned had to be sealed, however pathetically, against access. In other word, the virus was there for YEARS, waiting for the "food" to run out. After a breach, there is no way back. I would't bank on a proactive stance on anything

Mark in Florida · 1 year ago

So they are perpetrating even more lies. Nice. I don't think I would want to live in the neigborhood around that building. I can't believe this got through un challenged in any major way.

sukabi1 · 1 year ago

consider that most of the legislation that gets passed is only given a cursory look at best, and most don't get read at all... now couple that with the fact that most of our congressmen and women don't have the background necessary to evaluate any of the legislation they back or vote on... and the fact that real experts are not consulted in the process and what you end up with is something like this... the world's most deadly viruses being experimented on in a building that is on an island that is directly in the path of major hurricanes at least twice a year, every year...

Patrick_Bateman · 1 year ago

Come On Rapture!

Mark in Florida · 1 year ago

So when the rapture happens, do we first go to Alaska? I am confused by the whole 'Rapture schedule"..... :-)

Patrick_Bateman · 1 year ago

*laughin;* Wouldn't it be something if this fantastical thing they call "Rapture" REALLY turns out that the nice, sweet progressives (like us) were the ones taken? Man oh man, they would be punk'd no?

Mark in Florida · 1 year ago

Yes, it all makes sense. Wait for the second coming, we all go to Israel to 'save' the jews by converting them to Christianity, (According to Haggee this is about a three month grace period for them) If they don't convert, the jews then are condemned to hell.......OK, then do we go to Alaska? Or is it Alaska first...then we go to Israel? It's all very fuzzy.

Based on this logic.....I think we will all be OK, the bible beater that sit in judgement are the ones actually going to hell. That's the irony. Of this I am certain. :-)

ProgressiveTroll · 1 year ago

This Rapture and hell stuff is all bullshit to scare people and to get them to submit. This Jew is more "Christian" than any "Christian" I've ever met. I'm not going to "hell", I'm already in hell.

Mark in Florida · 1 year ago

Amen to that my friend.

Bluestocking · 1 year ago

Actually, if there turns out to be any truth to the predictions, you may be more right than you know. I may not be able to quote chapter and verse from memory like some evangelicals (and I might put in parenthetically that a talking parrot could theoretically be taught to do the same and yet show just as much understanding of it as some of them do) -- but I remember that somewhere in the Gospels, there's a warning from Jesus to the effect that not everyone who claims to be a Christian will be accepted as one on Judgment Day! Funny how so many of them seem to experience a conveniently selective form of amnesia when it comes to that passage...

Outspoken1 · 1 year ago

One word your never want to hear - oops!

bob915 · 1 year ago

Let me tell ya folks
I lived in Reston VA (a DC burb)in the late 80s/early 90's. There was a lab up there as well---we didn't know what it housed at the time, but there was an incident there with some of their monkeys and the Ebola virus......the entire lab had to be shut down, bldg about the size of a 1/2 block,and sealed. As far as I know, it is sealed to this day. Know what was next door? A church with an 800+ membership, a very busy McDonalds, and a daycare. ANyone out there remember this incident?

bob915 · 1 year ago

Just got a text from a former neighbor after asking her to verify-----the bldg has been torn down since, but she notes that there wasn't even as much as a fence around it until '95 or '96. She also reminds me the Ebola strain that hit the fan there was named the Reston strain

SCLiberal · 1 year ago

Yes. Richard Preston talked about it in his book The Hot Zone. Scary, scary nonfiction book.

cwzilla · 1 year ago

Hey I got an idea why not have bush put his library there since his administration and the neocon agenda has been a deadly virus to america and the world

Scottsdalian · 1 year ago

So a big hurricane unleashes these deadly germs and blows them inland --- over Texas. Neocon/Bible-thumping/rightwing-extremist/pro-Bush/Obama-is-a-MuslimTexans get wiped out from these deadly germs. So.....tell me why this is a bad thing?! (Snarky/sarcasim...sort of)

ekwhite · 1 year ago

Why is this a bad thing? Airplanes. All we need is one asymptomatic carrier to make it to another state, and we are screwed.

lost_nacf_gop · 1 year ago

Okay, people, gather 'round, lemme tell ya a story. Once upon a time, before big bloated corporate omnivorous dinosaurs ruled the nation, 60 Minutes would have had this story as its lead segment, and people who thought this was a good idea would run screaming out of the room, into oncoming traffic, and many times, the uber dumb ideas they'd brought to fruition would disappear with 'em. Nowadays, all we get from 60 Minutes are fluff pieces about Boone Pickens, and we rely upon people like John, Joe, Chris and Jackie to tell us what's really going on in the country. This lab in the hurricane path should be the illustration in Webster's next to "Idiotic." I have a better idea. Put the GWB Preznitshul LIe-berry in place of the lab.

ivquatch · 1 year ago

Doesn't the idea of a "biological defense laboratory" scare anyone else? Isn't this the type of place where they weaponize anthrax and other germs that shouldn't be weaponized in the first place?

vkobaya · 1 year ago

So far, no one has mentioned that such labs researching biological weapons are illegal under international law and building such laboratories is a war crime. Then again, this country has long, long been in violation of those laws through the pretense that we are doing "defensive" research, like how to weaponize these agents.

ivquatch · 1 year ago

Agreed. I don't see why we or anyone else should give the the US government the benefit of the doubt. Didn't the weaponized anthrax that showed up in Sen. Lehey's mail come from a US "defense" research facility?

TTC · 1 year ago

lol

cowboyneok · 1 year ago

Its all part of their "bring on Armageddon" faith based science policies! They TRY SO HARD to make G-d "Kill the evil infidels" (meaning anyone but them).

Indigo · 1 year ago

It's outrageous! However, considering that the immediate kill zone is in Texas, it isn't quite as outrageous as it might be in a civilized and settled community. No offense to decent, hardworking, liberal Texans, obviously but . . .

anarchy · 1 year ago

hardly surprising, given our idiot-in-chief for
the past 8 years.

if ever there was a wrong decision to be made,
GWB chose it.

"you shall reap as you sow"

EmGD · 1 year ago

Not only do we get super hurricanes, but we get ones teeming with freakishly deadly rare diseases. It's almost as if Bush is some sort of BOnd villain. Are we sure he hasn't built any unstable nuclear reactors near fault lines on on the rims of volcanoes?

http://thesebastards.blogspot.com/

vkobaya · 1 year ago

Now that would be an excellent plot for a Bond movie, Bond assigned to kill the supervillain president of the United States. However, given the political climate, I would suspect that the supervillain president would be a skinny, charsmatic Black man. Sigh!

sukabi1 · 1 year ago

it's probably not so much incompetence as working to "bring it on" ... "it" of course is "The Rapture"...

several years ago I happened to stumble on an article by David Icke about an "illuminati card game" that had been first published sometime in the late 80's to mid 90's ... remarkably the events on the cards he pulled out and "saved" from the game have been pretty "spot on" to what's been happening over the last several years....

anyway, I'm not a "believer" in these types of things (either mystics or Rapturists), but it's not important if I believe them, or if you believe them.... the fact of the matter is that our government has been staffed with folks who do believe in "the end times" and are working their damnedest to "facilitate the second coming"...

Indigo · 1 year ago

RP [retrospective prohecy] is especially powerful. You pull a card, you wait for something like that to happen, then you announce the prophecy.

Prophecy is a whole lot easier to manipulate when you do it that way, like salting a Baghdad neighborhood with weapons in order to discover weapons. It's a living for some and a joke for others but the gamers and charlatains are always out there.

Actual psychics keep a low profile because what's in the astral realm is often difficult to interpret. Worse yet, it attracts the Hollywood gamesters.

sukabi1 · 1 year ago

I can't say I know a lot -- or really anything about that... I do know I was creeped out by the article... I came across it sometime in early 2002 ... the big obvious card had already happened ... it was about the time that Rumsfeld was pushing HARD for everyone to get the anthrax and small pox vaccines... but right before it was disclosed that Rumsfeld would personally profit, and profit in a huge way from this.... and prior to the findings that both vaccines, as they were at the time, would have significant side effects for a large percentage of folks... and at the time the Bush admin was fiddling with the composition and official tasks of the CDC...

Indigo · 1 year ago

That's the problem.  The formula is :  take one creepy coincidence and spin it with hocus pocus, abracadabra, and bibbity-bobbity-Boo!  It's a Halloweeny trick.  There are real psychics in the world and real prophecy does happen, but not in write-ups for sensational news for Halloweeny effect. The real article stays low on the radar because notoriety disrupts psychic energy.

Bush_Bites · 1 year ago

Republicans don't believe in science anyway (except as an opportunity for more pork), so they probably figure there are no worries.

stymie · 1 year ago

And it was constructed on "lowest bidder contracts".

Plisko · 1 year ago

I remember in Florida during Hurricane Andrew the first thing that went down was the hurricane center that was supposed to withstand 140 mile per hour winds.

pluky · 1 year ago

I sort of remember a line from the Gospels warning one not to build ones house on sand..

Moderation · 1 year ago

How many diseases are brought to America from Africa when a tropical storm travels across the Atlantic?

These imbeciles want to put a bunch of these diseases right in the path of a full-strength hurricane right off the American coastline, without an entire ocean between the origin and the landing site?!? Are you f***ing serious? I'm with some of the other posters, this is asinine, and points to a potential dominionist NEED to bring about the end-times, whether consciously or subconsciously. I would say it's unbelievable, but not with the lunatics currently in charge. Heck, Cheney, the sociopath-in-chief, would likely suggest this sort of thing just for giggles. >_<

ekwhite · 1 year ago

This is horrendous...a BioSafety level 4 facility on a barrier island? A laboratory containing some of the most deadly viruses known to man? A laboratory that handles avian flu and Marburg-Ebola should be located on geologically stable land surrounded by a military base, not on a barrier island and in the middle of a college campus! The potential for harm due to natural disaster or terrorist attack is truly sobering.